Thanks Sam, what a choice selection of gear you have! Brax is lovely stuff.
Thanks
yes Brax is very nice. I'd like some more, like a car full, but that would be greedy LOL. The hybrid of brands, Hertz, Brax, Helix and a Kenwood Head unit I have in the car works great and it gets a lot of use, far more than my home speaker-based hifi that sadly gets used for home theatre 95% of the time.
Note the SP1000 doesn't drive the LCD4s to uncomfortable levels or distortion. I'd say it gets them to "comfortably loud" if I had to put words to it. It is about the same volume as the headphone socket of my full size Marantz CD80. On my Burson Conductor and my Marantz PM80 integrated I can get the LCD4s unbelievably loud. And just for the record I need to sell the Audeze LCD3s as I bought the LCD4s as an upgrade. But the LCDxc are what I use the most as closed-back keeps my wife happier
But the Audeze are planars and not very efficient. I suspect the SP1000 would drive most conventional headphones beyond comfort.
I was lucky enough to sell hifi part-time at a top-end hifi store in Australia while I was at Uni in the early '90s. Ten minute walk between Uni and work. Awesome job for a 20yo music fanatic. So once I had heard really good gear there was no going back, and back then I could get gear at wholesale prices. I bought a pair of Sennheiser headphones at the time, about AU$350 RRP which was a shirtload of money in the early '90s especially for a uni student, maybe the HD580s from memory. Plus I still have my Marantz CD80 player and PM80 amp, a 200wpc Rotel RB1080 power amp, some Dalisuite 3.5 floorstanding speakers and Dynaudio Image 1 two-way bookshelf speakers from that time.
We sold Dali, Spendor, Bose, Rotel, Marantz, Dynaudio, Sony, Yamaha and a few other brands. We had Nakamichi Including a 200wpc pre-power combo that was about AU$10,000 and that was the early '90s. And the legendary Nakamichi Dragon four head cassette player. The Marantz PM95 integrated amp and two-piece CD12 player were astonishing. Spendor S100s were genius at classical and the Dali 40 floor standing speakers are still pretty much as good as anything I've ever heard and the Dali DaCapo ribbon hybrids were simply breathtaking with full length ribbons maybe 1.5m long. The midrange and treble above the 400hz crossover is still the most realistic reproduction of piano, violin, most other acoustic instruments, and the human voice I've ever heard. We sold so much Bose, not so refined but awesome party gear and the designs were so innovative. Things like the Bose 901s and AM5 satellite/sub combo blew people away.
I picked up a Musical Fidelity Nuvista pre amp with the legendary metal nuvistor tubes, one of 500 made, 2nd hand maybe about the year 2000??? That and the Rotel RB1080 are just beyond spectacular together. I've always wanted the matching nuvistor power amps but they never come onto the market and are insanely expensive if they do, about the same price as a new mid size Toyota car
The Musical Fidelity nu-vista tube story is a great read:
"His travails in merely acquiring enough nuvistors to make sufficient numbers of a specific model would make interesting reading, but space precludes it. Suffice to say, none of the tube suppliers took him seriously until he produced the funds up front to prove his intent. Hey, presto – thousands of the little gems were suddenly on their way to Olympic Trading Estate, enough to put four in each of the 500 examples he will produce of the Nu-Vista pre-amplifiers, with Musical Fidelity keeping in storage a complete set of replacement nuvistors for each one; this accounts for 4000 of the little bleeders. And with nuvistors enjoying a life estimated at around 100,000 hours, well, MF reckons that’s good for 12-15 years. So, even with heavy use, Nu-Vistas on the second set of nuvistors should be working until 2025. If the planet’s still working."
Ken Kessler review (Hi-Fi News & Record Review, August 1998)
I have an AK SP1000M and it is astonishingly good. It drives my Audeze well, LCD3, LCDxc LCDi3 and LCD4. Unbelievable source for my home hifi's at a pinch and so good in the car with a top end system, Brax, Hertz and Helix combo. My AK70 is even respectable for all those purposes. Actually, I'll try the SP1000M out again with the LCD4's to check. But the SQ is outstanding, if it comes up short with the LCD4s it's just the little extra volume you want very occasionally. I can plug it into my Burson Conductor 3x or Sparko Aries as a line level source in my home systems and it's great. Not as good as the Chord Qutest or the Burson Conductor 3x DAC but it's more than respectable. Portables have come such a long way.
But I'm sure the SP2000 is an absolute cracker. I guess it's a matter of price vs performance and features. I did start with an AK70 which I love and that is an awesome bit of kit, and I thought it was so expensive when I bought it. I never would have gone for a SP1000 without the AK70 as a stepping stone. The AK70 gets used for music when I'm running and at the gym now.
I hope that all doesn't sound too much like gloating, you've sent me down memory lane which is really nice. I will say two things that have worked for me. Wherever possible buy high quality and buy it once and keep it. And 2nd hand and superseded models can get you outstanding quality while saving you an absolute fortune.
